If you ask Rob Van Dam, the greatest pro wrestling booker of all-time is Paul Heyman.
“The Whole F’N Show” spoke about this opinion during the latest installment of his “1 Of A Kind” podcast.
Featured below are some of the highlights.
On if he considers Paul Heyman the greatest booker of all time: “I think you know that as far as booking goes, in my opinion, I think he’s the best. And that’s also because I like his stuff in particular. He got a lot of pushback from the WWE office in 2001 during the Alliance. A lot of his ideas got opposed. Same thing when we brought ECW back for the Sci-Fi network. A lot of his ideas were opposed. There were other bookers in the office that think completely different. They would think it’s ridiculous. I think Paul’s got the best ideas cause they thought the exact opposite and tried to stop all of his ideas. But I agree with that sentence that he’s the best that I know of.”
On thinking he was getting buried by Vince McMahon during his first WWE in 1997: “That was the first time that I’d actually had a face-to-face meeting with Vince and I was telling him, ‘What is this doing for ECW if we go this route and we’re on your TV? Saying what? That we’re inferior to you?. That’s not why I’m here.’ And [Vince] was like, ‘Well Rob, obviously I wouldn’t have had you on my TV unless I saw you staying here and being one of my talents. I see you as a babyface, an aggressive babyface, but in the long [run].’ And I was just like, ‘What?’ And I’m turning to look at Paul and he’s like, as far away as you can be by still being in the same room. And then when I was like, ‘Paul, this doesn’t seem right.’ (As Paul) ‘You wanna go? Let’s go. Let’s go.’ You know? And he is just ready to go instead of trying to work anything out or explain anything, you know?
On when he figured out Paul’s agenda with ECW and WWE: “Years later… I think it was after 2001. 2002 after I went to WWE and was the first ECW version during the Alliance? Yes, it was. It wasn’t before that.”
Check out the complete episode at Substack.com.
